Hifiman HE1000 & Arya Unveiled

With their Unveiled series, Hifiman are taking the concept of open‑backed headphones to its logical conclusion!

Hifiman’s Unveiled models are fully open, with nothing between the magnet structure and the outside world.If you believe some corners of the Internet, Chinese manufacturing is all about imitation rather than innovation. Look for yourself, though, and you’ll find Chinese companies bringing new ideas to market in every sector. In the world of headphones, Hifiman lead the pack, with founder Dr Fang Bian pushing forward the development of transducer technology at a sometimes dizzying speed.

My own first encounter with the brand came three years ago, when I looked at their Arya, Sundara and HE‑R10D models in SOS April 2022. Together, these represented a relatively small sample from the very wide Hifiman catalogue, but were enough to demonstrate the diversity of designs that can be found therein.

One of the things that has historically relegated planar magnetic headphones to the ‘alternative’ category is the difficulty of matching the HF extension of moving‑coil designs. Hifiman’s designs showed that this is not an inherent limitation of the technology; and, with the Sundara in particular, they also demonstrated that planar headphones can compete head‑to‑head on price with moving‑coil models of similar quality.

Lifting The Veil

The pace of development at Hifiman is such that numerous models have been added to the range since 2022, and it has to be said that the full line‑up is both impressive and slightly confusing. At first glance, it appears that Hifiman products all occupy one of three pricing or quality tiers labelled Reference, Premium and Hi‑Fi. However, although the HE1000se, HE1000 Stealth and Arya Organic models are found in the Reference category, the two review models actually form part of the Premium line, despite being slightly more expensive than those counterparts. Both are open‑backed, planar magnetic headphones that implement another of Dr Fang Bian’s design innovations.

In the HE1000 Unveiled and the Arya Unveiled, existing Hifiman technologies such as the Nanometre Thickness Diaphragm and Stealth Magnets Design are paired with a new construction that seeks to eliminate possible sources of reflection and refraction within the earcup. In...